Friday, 26 March, 2004

Press coverage during run-up to Iraq war. During the mid week coverage of the 9-11 hearings, I kept thinking back to the Diane Rehm Show segment I listened to on Monday [11:00 segment Mo, 22Mar04] when I had the day off and was able to give reasonably full attention to. It was the disconnect between the two, placed in near conjunction, which was so disassociating. Rehms show was on the press coverage during the seven to eight months before the war. Assessing the quality and efficacy of the work. They spent a good part of the show just trying to come to terms with the phenomenon - certainly something happened. Critical coverage just disappeared. The discussion went to the heart of what journalists believe they are doing: from reporting the news of the world, to taking notes from politicians press assistants. Some had a hard time leaving the latter view they didn't want to have the media even independently handle or admit cognizance of any of the ideas or policy choices of a debate without taking it as a quote from some political authorities mouth. They wanted to pretend thats how they do their jobs. Its clear though that they really felt they needed political coverage, because made little use of academics (political scientists, area specialists), foreign points of view, and they admit also that they gave singularly one-sided short shrift to what experts (various generals and other voices from the government) did disagree with the administration. I thought that the discussion was tracking closely with opinions that Washington Post Ombudsman Michael Getler holds on this topic. Eventually I figured out that he was one of the guests, along with Bob Drogin and Susan Moeller (from the journalism dept. here at the University of Maryland), and that was why. The Report of the 9-11 commission as they are allowing themselves to known as, is lengthy and a lot of words was kicked out by Richard Clark and others during the hearings this week. I haven't been through as much as a fifth of it, so I don't have any definite impression of it yet. I intend to post an observation on this over the weekend. As I watched John Lehman question Clarke; Though, I thought, I ought to tell my John Lehman story. Lehman was Secretary of the Navy during the years I was stationed in the Pentagon, I saw him about once a week through that period - my daily routine took me through his office on the E-ring. 10:03:59 AM    comment [];trackback [];

© Copyright 2004 Paul Bushmiller. Last update: 3/26/04; 10:13:56.